Barbara Balossi

Where are your favorite hiking and running trails in Southern California? (Closer to OC the better, but we're open to travel!)Where are your favorite hiking and running trails in Southern California? (Closer to OC the better, but we're open to travel!)

What happens when you receive more than one offer on your home? Good things. That's what. In California, sellers can respond by a counter-offer to more than one buyer. ... This is one of the most brilliant allowances of the California real estate market. By being able to counter more than one offer, a seller has a chance to get acquainted with each buyer. A seller can assess how a buyer (and their agent) conduct themselves in a business transaction. Are they timely in their response? Do they communicate well? Are they willing to compromise and find the win/win? Is each buyer easy to work with or already demonstrating they'll be a pain in the arse? Buying and selling a house is not supposed to be a miserable experience for all involved. But some buyers and agents believe the opposite. And they like to duke out all their life's troubles in their real estate dealings. If you have multiple offers, you don't have to work with these cranky people if you don't want to. ^Remember when I said good things happen with multiple offers? This might be the very best thing. You get to say, 'not today,' to the crankies and wish them well on their way. Life's too short for nonsense. Of course, a seller isn't required to respond to all offers with a counter-offer. A seller can choose to accept their favorite offer right out of the gate if they want to. But wouldn't it make sense to pressure test each offer with at least one round of negotiations and see how everyone behaves and responds? In my experience: Yes. Yes, it does.

I'm working to develop myself as a runner. An athlete even. This requires experiencing new physical stress. ... And it requires a commitment to training consistently. Perhaps even more importantly, it also requires dismantling a personal identity. And building a new one. It requires me to see myself differently. It requires me to see myself differently than others might see me at my age. I eat pretty well. I'd say my health grade would be a solid B in terms of choices I make to take care of myself. But the gap between being a generally healthy person and being physically fit has always seemed too wide a jump for me to cross. So I've been practicing. Practicing imagining that at 45, this is the beginning of my story of physical fitness. I imagine, in a few years, maybe I'll run endurance races. Maybe at 60, I'll run hundos. Why not? I practice seeing myself as a rookie athlete today. And I practice imagining myself as an athlete athlete tomorrow. I'm learning that to change who I am, first I change who I think I am.

What if being unsettled is our soul’s way of moving us toward alignment? On the surface, things are great. Your home is perfectly fine. The location is fine. You have space. Your family’s needs are met. ... But something feels off. And that tug is almost constant. Living incongruently causes some serious emotional buckles. Have you ever thought, I feel like I’m living someone else’s life? I want to encourage you to explore what’s really going on. Watch the video for a few ideas to help this process.

When raising kids, the days are long and the years are short, right? I work with a lot of families who thought they were settled. Maybe this describes you, too? You didn’t think you’d move again. But you can’t shake the idea.... Maybe the schools aren’t what you’d hoped for and as your kids get older, they seem even more of a misfit. The class sizes are getting wonky. District budgets are getting tighter. Courses are getting cut from the curriculum. Maybe this new way of schooling isn’t happening as you’d hoped. Maybe the school is great on all counts, but it still doesn’t feel right. Here’s what I want you to know: In Orange County, we have 28 K - 12 public school districts. These districts host 608 schools. On Niche, 12 of our 28 public school districts have an A grade. This is amazing! In the top 5 OC public school districts, we have 57 elementary schools, 20 middle schools and 25 high schools. We also have 387 private schools throughout Orange County. Together, we’ll identify which schools (in person and online options) that you want to research for your family. You have choices. You are not stuck.